Ivan Turchin

Ivan Vasilyevich Turchaninov (24 December 1822-18 June 1901), better known as John Basil Turchin, was a Russian-American who served as a Brigadier-General of the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was a pioneer of what would become "total war" tactics, but he was vilified by the Confederacy for his role in the "Rape of Athens" on 2 May 1862.

Biogrphy
Ivan Vasilyevich Turchaninov was born in the Russian Empire in 1822 to a family of Don Cossacks, and he joined the Imperial Russian Army in 1843 and graduated from the Imperial Military School in St. Petersburg in 1852. He fought in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and the Crimean War, and, in 1856, he and his wife emigrated to Chicago, Illinois, where he worked on the Illinois Central Railroad. He joined the Union Army at the outbreak of the American Civil War and became colonel of the 19th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, serving in Missouri and Kentucky before joining forces with Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. He was promoted to brigade command by Buell, but Buell planned to court-martial him when he let his men plunder Athens, Alabama for two hours on 2 May 1862; President Abraham Lincoln prevented this when he promoted Turchin to Brigadier-General. He distinguished himself at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, where he led two critical charges that saved the day for the Union retreat, and again at the Battle of Chattanooga, where he was among the first to lead soldiers up Missionary Ridge. He resigned in October 1864 after falling ill from sunstroke, and he worked as a patent solicitor and civil engineer in Chicago. He was later involved in real estate and the settlement of immigrants in southern Illinois, only to die penniless in an institution in Anna, Illinois in 1901 at the age of 79.